Identities and the Media: Feminism

1) Read Playing With The Past: Post-feminism and the Media (MM40, page 64).

2) The two texts which this article focused on are the following:

• HBO's Pan Am
• Beyonce's music video - 'Why Don't You Love Me

3) From Beyonce, an example of the male gaze been shown is by the fact that you can see her using make up from the pictures provided in the article. The makeup shown is a key example of it makes them more attractive to the male gender. In addition, in the actual video, bras and knickers were also used  by the women as it also suggested that they were being very sexual and appealing to the male audience. Furthermore, from the text Pan Am, the male gaze has been shown also by what the four female models are wearing (pilot costumes - skirts etc). Although these particular skirts were more appealing to the men in the last 50 years ago, men now find that smaller skirts are more attractive to that particular audience.

4) Personally, I believe  that there is no such things as feminism in today's world. This is because of the fact that anyone has got the role to do anything they want to. Of course, there are certain things in which a male can do and a female cannot do and vice-versa, but in today's culture, lots are people can do things equally. For example, many  years ago we wouldn't expect a female to do a man's job, for example being a police officer but nowadays they are. So therefore, I believe that feminism doesn't count in this day and age and I believe that anyone can do anything.

5) Patriarchy - An ideology that places men in a dominant position over women.
Male Gaze - The gaze referring to Laura Mulvey's seminal article 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' which argues that main stream Hollywood films subject female characters to the 'male gaze' of the camera, fragmenting and objectifying their bodies.
Feminism - A movement aimed at defining, establishing, and defending women's rights and equality to men.

No More Page 3

1) No More Page 3 was started by Author Lucy-Anne Holmes in August 2012. The reason why it was started is because of the fact that there were many complaints for having a topless women on every single page 3 cover. In addition, the Author who started all of this once was reading the paper and then thought to herself that this is a 'man's world', where really it shouldn't be the case.

2) One of the key reasons in which Page 3 had to to go is because it was showing the women's body in a offensive way, as there wasn't any meaningful reason as to why this women had her picture taken and posted like this. Therefore, realizing that this was only there to pleasure the male gender and also demoralizing the female gender.

3) In this article from the guardian, Susie Boniface talked about how showing the nudity of women was almost a way of making them more powerful against the men. This showed that the gender didn't care about who would see it and did it to almost 'free' themselves. However, the other spokesperson Barbara Ellen, talked about how the Page 3 was disrespecting the female gender as it was a way to pleasure the male gender. In a follow  through answer, she said the following: " Page 3 is the Old Order – reeking of male dominance, of women as sexualised and neutralised objects (Stripping celebrities at least bring a sense of their public personalities)."

4 & 6) An example of an article from the website I chose is "Little Mixed Up About What To Wear?". This article was about talking about the outfits which the singing group were wearing and how it was like the page 3, in the sense that they were wearing little amount of clothing even though they were broadcasting live with the younger viewers watching. In my opinion, I disagree with this article simply because  of the fact that I believe that anyone should have the access of wearing whatever they wish to, of their own choice. Even though they may have been wearing something that a lot of the audience may not have approved off, it was still past the time which the younger audience shouldn't really be watching TV anyways, so I believe that it is only a matter of opinion but still believe that anyone should have the option to wear whatever they which to, as long as they feel comfortable in it.

5) Looking at the No More Page 3 campaign and the article that I was reading from the Sexist News website, I believe that, to some extent, they are very similar in the sense that they have similar views about what a female body should have covering themselves up with. They both believe that they shouldn't being showing too much of their own skin and should cover up themselves as much as they could. I can tell that this is coming from a women perspective as they may not like the fact that the female gender is almost downgrading themselves as you wouldn't see the male gender have pictures taken in a nudity manner etc.

7) In my opinion, I believe that there still is a need for feminism because even though life is completely different now compared to how things were 50-100 years ago, there are still many different aspects where people believe that women aren't getting the same treatment as what men may do. For example, power; people still believe that men are still more powerful in every aspect but nowadays, we see people like the PM of the UK who is a female but isn't getting that notification as what a person like Donald Trump is getting as he is now the President of the US. 

07/02/17 - Twitter accounts really are echo chambers, study finds (44)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/04/twitter-accounts-really-are-echo-chambers-study-finds

This article firstly started to talk about how politics and the internet are very similar with each other. It then carried on saying that a research carried out by Twitter users from parties such as Labour are tend to interact with each other more than the other different political parties. In addition, it started to talk about how on Twitter, different types of supporters would act differently on the social media sites, even by the things they may upload on their Twitter profile picture, said by a cognitive scientist at Sheffield University, Tom Stafford. It also showed a table under the headline 'Political user groups were found to re-tweet users who belong to their own group more frequently than those belonging to others'. So overall, this article manly was talking about the way in which all of these politicians use social media accounts, according to different types of research taken into account.

• More than three-quarters of retweets from SNP supporters and 73% of those from Ukip supporters were of someone from their own party. In contrast, the highest proportion of one party retweeting supporters of another – 32% – was between Tories and Ukip supporters.
• Labour supporters were weighted more heavily towards the Guardian, Independent, New Statesman, Mirror and Huffington Post, all of which Demos classes as centre-left or leftwing, and perhaps unsurprisingly accounted for 82% of shares from LabourList.
• The research was carried out by the thinktank Demos, which looked at the tweets sent between May and August last year by 2,000 people who have publicly stated their political allegiance on their profiles and who had at some point addressed a member of parliament in their tweets.

In my opinion, I really find this very interesting in terms of finding out how the people, we would hardly expect to use social media sites, use them. However, linking back to the title of this article, I disagree with it since I believe that they are not an echo chamber, to some extent. Echo chambers are defined as uncensored etc, but I believe that these politicians do like to try and hide some important information and keep it private and within the party itself.

07/02/17 - IMDb shuts down its message boards (43)

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/06/imdb-shuts-down-message-boards

This article is talking about how the IMDb website has shut down its message board for users to make comments on. They (IMDb) believed that it wasn't creating a positive place for the users and included that there monthly users contain of 250 million. The message board allows different users to make their own discussions on the website and allowed a lot of other users talk on it to. Whether it was talking about the movie itself or other sequels they would want to recommend to others. In addition, a spokesman told the guardian that "The human brains like to make connections. Somebody spots a connection between two things ... you want to share that knowledge". This meant that when ever someone saw something that they may want to make reference to, they would have immediately done that with the message board but a lot of the things turned out to be very negative as there were many different critics out there with an opinion that wasn't encouraging for a lot of the other users.

• More specifically, the company – which was set up in 1990 by Bristol-based IT worker Col Needham and later sold to Amazon
• The message boards will be permanently disabled on 20 February, following a two-week transition period.
• In a statement on its website, the IMDb said it had “concluded that IMDb’s message boards are no longer providing a positive, useful experience for the vast majority of our more than 250 million monthly users worldwide”, and that the decision was “based on data and traffic”

In my opinion, I believe that getting rid of the message board for others to interact on was a bad idea. This is because of the fact that people don't have that much accessibility to the website and cannot, in result, have the option of putting out their opinions. The internet is all about have the freedom to discuss what they want to, even if someone found it negative. We have many different social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter where we have the option of having an opinion and sharing news etc. Therefore, I believe that this this shouldn't have happened considering this isn't showing the freedom which the users online should have.

Post-colonialism - bonus reading and tasks

MM58

Page 66

1) Aisha Harris - This theorist argued that social media play a negative role in the construction of black identities, for example, in social media such as Twitter, we tend to see a lot of black people in "internet 'memes'". 

Giddens - This theorist argued that social media can be an arena for the construction of positive black identities. One example given from the article is 'The Blackout', which was a campaign involving the "celebration of blackness".

 Henry Jenkins - This theorist also argued that social media is an arena wherein 'participatory cultures' can be established. An example of this is another online campaign on Twitter called '#BlackTwitter', which challenges negative representations of black identity.

2) In my opinion, I believe that social media is a negative force when it comes to issues of black identity. Since I believe this, this is therefore linked to a theorist that was mentioned in the article, Aisha Harris. A key reason why I believe that it is a negative for because of the fact that the users, occasionally make 'fun of' black identities when it comes to social media and hardly ever target anyone else. This, in my opinion, makes the black identity vulnerable and therefore, some of the audience would feel sorry for them because they are occasionally the ones who have been targeted at by the audience.

3) The key theorist which links to the issue of social media and black identity is Alvarado. One of the key words which works well with this issue is humorous. A lot of things posted on social media related to black identity whether it's vines or memes, it tends to generate a lot of laughter. Therefore, I believe that humorous is a good way to describe this issue but to some extent, it does downgrade them which then can also link to pitied as they are shown to also be vulnerable.

Page 6

1) In the British press, a great deal of the language and the imagery has been hostile. Refugees are often labelled as migrants, to create the impression that they are travelling by choice, rather than fleeing a genuine disaster. In addition, they have been misrepresented as the refugees are described as swarm, horde or tide.

2) In my opinion, I believe that the documentary genre is less biased than the news media. As said in the article, documentary television can correct the overwhelmingly negative impression of refugees given elsewhere in the media, and the humanity of those at the sharp end of the world's conflict. With the documentary genre, they tend to focus more solely on the topic of the issue and therefore, the audience then understand the issue more .

3) Edward Said is a good post-colonial theory to link to the issue of representation of refugees. Said talks about the west against the east of the world and how the West over power the East as they also believe that they are more superior than them. Therefore, since the East side of the World contain the refugee's, this is why I believe that Said is a good theorist to mention, because the West is more powerful.

Post-colonialism: final blog tasks

1)  Alvarado - This is a theory which highly talks about the black community and how they have been represented, e.g. How we the audience would see them (Pitied - vulnerable, Dangerous - crimes, exotic - food, humorous - actors).

Fanon - This theorist is someone which described colonialism as essentially destructive and you can link some of what he says to diaspora identity. 

Said - This theorist explained that at the start of European colonisation the Europeans came in contact with the lesser developed countries and believe that they were more superior considering that they had the better lifestyles, e.g. In terms of wealth.

2) In my opinion, I believe that the opening of Yasmin created a positive and also a negative view of British Muslim. Firstly, it created a positive representation because in the clip, we saw that the main character was helping disabled children as it was her job. Even though we do see Muslim's in a negative way, this does create a positive sense of their representations as they are caring for others too even though the get 'grief' a lot. On the other hand, it creates a negative representation within the community itself as the beginning showed disrespect to the Muslim community because of the fact that the main protagonist was taking off her religious clothes and putting on 
more 'westernise' clothes. It almost shows a sense of downgrading their culture which will really effect those who are very religious and wear religious clothing everyday.  

3) 

Alvarado

This video is linked to Alvarado, as it is reinforcing the stereotype that the Black community is 'dangerous'. I believe this because it is talking about how this black man, had been suspicious of killing over 30 women across 20 years which is a frightening statistic and this is why I believe it is linked to Alvarado.

This is another clip which can be used in Alvarado's theory of dangerous, to some extent. Stereo typically, people believe that the black community are violent but in this case, it is doesn't show them to be as violent as what people may suggest of them. They have been shown to be very friendly and in this case, it shows them to be 'pitied'.

This is another video which is linked to Alvarado. But in this case, it is linked to humurous. Nowadays people find the black community very funny and not too serious and we can use Katt Williams as an example. He is a comedian and there are also other actors and comedians that are the same, e.g. Will Smith or even Kevin Hart.

Edward Said

I chose these three clips as I believe that they all have similar concepts of 'East vs West'. The thing which they all have in common is that they all are about these families that have come from either India or Pakistan and have moved over to England. For example, in East is East, a Pakistani family had moved to England and this Pakistani man had married this white women. This almost shows that the West is more superior than the East, because firstly, the East have moved to the West. In addition, in the East, we would see more traditional clothing but nowadays, we see the East wearing more Westernised clothing which links back to the fact that the West are more powerful.

Fanon

All of these videos are linked to Fanon's theory and the key word, 'decivilize'. In each video, it links to gangsta and pimp, as in all of these videos, it was creating a violent atmosphere. For example, Ill Manors was a movie on not allowing young people what they want and therefore, created the video of the young people violently ruining cities and looking like they are criminals. 

31/01/17 - Facebook is trying to tackle fake news, but what should we do? (42)

https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2017/jan/26/facebook-is-trying-to-tackle-fake-news-but-what-should-we-do

This article is about how Facebook are wanting to find a way to prevent fake news from happening. For example, the writer mentions that in mid-December, it announced that Facebook was testing a system to indentify fraudulent news stories. Now, Facebook is updating its trending list feature to favour verified news stories and to counter fake news. The list, itself, will be covered and monitored by several publishers, rather than on subjects that draw the largest number of people who share or comment on posts, where a lot of the fake news occurs with numerous of people misleading other users by feeding them the inaccurate information. In addition, at the very top, it gave an example of Donald Trump on how he is also filled with lies and would get a lot of his message across to the public via social media and then a lot of the popular social media accounts started to act upon this and try to make a difference to the world and online platform. 

• After a review, it has excited about 200 publishers from its AdSense network for various misrepresentations. 
• But is all fake news all the fault of social media ?
• "I swear to tell the post truth, the alternative truth and nothing but the truth".

I believe that what Facebook are doing, is trying to save themselves from the critics so that they will not have anything bad said about them. One of the key reasons I think this is because, CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks about how 99% of the time, news is accurate which therefore means that there is a 1% chance that the news could be inaccurate. However, he did not mention that; he said that they will spot this 1% chance and no one would notice it. In addition, I believe that this is very misleading for the Facebook users and they then may think that everything that they see on Facebook is true when others would know that this is a false piece of news. Therefore, I think that Facebook should change this and should make sure that everything they distribute should be properly checked over before 'feeding the news' to their audience/users.

31/01/17 - Lies can thrive in the social media world (41)

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/29/lies-can-thrive-in-the-social-media-world

This article is about how social media is filled with so many lies and people can believe it, which is also linked to the main story today, Fake News. The writer, firstly mentions, that although accuracy can be more easily checked and lies rubutted, the sheer volume of inaccurate social media material means that not everything can be corrected. In addition, the writer also gives another reason why the online world cannot be trust to some extent. The writer simply wrote the following: "The second danger is that the historical record of trust is trampled over to provide "alternative facts". There are always been a risk of history being rewritten...". A key example that this can strongly be linked to in today's online/digital world is fake news which is widely being spread through the use of social media.

In my opinion, by reading this article it makes me believe about the future and how, as mentioned in the article, "history being rewritten". Back then, there were many organisation that would give their audience's incorrect information and I believe that in today's day, I see a similar thing reoccuring with the likes of fake news. So, the conclusion of this that I would strong look at is if we can trust the online platform now or is it a place where people are corrupted and all they care about is feeding inaccurate information to the audience. I believe that the internet is becoming a worse place for user's, especially the younger audience as they are the ones who could be affected by this in the long term.